Breaking Glass

The line:

"Don't look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it"

is about Station To Station. On the back cover to that album, there's a picture of David drawing a Tree of Life on the ground in his ugly blue pyjamas. His discography is full of references to Alchemy, the Qaballah and the occult like that.

To me, Bowie seems to have captured the sound of a man having some sort of psychotic break. Kind of like "A Beautiful Mind" sort of thing. Literally breaking glass and scattering it about the room; drawing weird images on the carpet. He has moments of lucidity where he sees what he's doing and warns his significant other. Then his paranoia turns on that person and he begins to suspect that person's actually the one who has problems, which is why he'll never touch them. Oddly enough, in past live concerts, it almost sounds like he changes the chant midway from "I'll never touch you" to "Let me touch you."

I don't know if they called Speed glass back then but if they did the lyrics seem to astutely albeit vaguely characterize a night among friends locked in a bedroom, tweaking away. Of course on the level that LOW was an extremely experimental album I suppose Bowie could be references the destructionist composer Phillip Glass -- as in the activities being described are the wacky things Bowie and Eno did in the studio at the time with atonality and randomness. The drug theme goes with his overall canon better though.

rabbithowl's observation about the line "Don't look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it," is spot on IMO. I'd like to point out how Bowie is saying there is something that you can hear, see, but can never touch. The song is a lot less disjointed than it appears. I think it has to do with Bowie's shattered ego and his attempt to reassemble a new persona out of the pieces. He fucked up his mind with drugs, he strained his psyche with occult practice, and created a persona that's wonderful but has problems. He can experience this ideal through second-hand experience, but he'll never really touch it. I think the entire concept of "Low" itself deals largely with the trials of trying to achieve a state of self-perfection; the frustrations of trying to bring the pureness of thought from Kether into the world of Malkuth. Occultism is the constant, blatant-but-hidden center to Bowie's entire body of work, and to truly grasp some of his lyrics you must have an understanding of these things.

I thought the line was can I touch you, haha,

Killer stuff. It gets you started on Low's vocal takes with great punch.

I just love how disjointed, fractured, badly damage this song manages to sound. As for the lyrics... Hmmm quite mysterious huh? No true ideas.

My understanding, is Breaking Glass was written during Bowie's residence in Berlin (the "Low" album on which it appears being one of the three albums written & produced there - Station to Station, Low & Heroes. Three of Bowie's most introspective albums, sometimes referred to as "The Berlin Trilogy" ), during which time, it is well documented, Bowie developed a fascination with fascism. "The Night of Breaking Glass" was a turning point for Hitler's Nazi party (not in their ideology), rather in their process - it was sudden, brutal and, at that point, for the first time demonstrated to the German people. I believe, rether than drug references, etc, it's a reference to a sudden, dramatic & demonstrative change in how Bowie was behaving.

I love this song. the rythm in it just makes me dance, I can't sit still listening to this song.

this song is soooo funky

I keep thinking, "Wouldn't it be funny if he had a single edit or single version for this song?" Good beat, makes me want to dance to it, which is a horrid sight.